hooser
11mo ago
Harvard decides to decline Trump's administration's "agreement in principle" for continuing to provide Federal grants and contracts. The Trump administration freezes their $2.2 billion funds.
Unlike Columbia, Harvard is willing to send a costly signal that it is, indeed, an elite private university, and it plans to stay that way.
The Fed's letter included contradictory demands. One can't require merit-based admissions and hiring while also requiring viewpoint-diversity admissions and hiring:
Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring. By August 2025, the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse. [...] Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity. [...]
I would have loved to see that viewpoint diversity report on an Abstract Algebra class. It should at least require the elimination of radical ideals.
The way I see it, what makes Harvard University elite is that it both draws and correctly chooses the elite. The elite want to go there because other elite will be there, and admission of the non-elites is carefully curated for their usefulness. It's like an exclusive party that's awesome because a whole bunch of awesome people are there, and boring people aren't, with a few useful wingmen. If the party's host was required to invite a bunch of boring people, the party will break up as awesome people take off. There might be a brief party hiatus for the awesome people as they coordinate where to have the next awesome exclusive party, but awesome people seem to coordinate pretty quickly, so that party will resume. Just not at the current host's place.
So Harvard looked at the $2.2 billion, looked at their party, and decided to party on.
hooser
11mo ago
The main party includes a woman, who is also a strong, physical fighter.
Her abilities get represented as highly unusual in that world, and the reason for her deviation is important to the plot. Unfortunately, the author provides no such reason for the protagonist of "Best served cold" set in the same world and time. So skip that one, if martial females mess with your enjoyment of the story.
hooser
11mo ago
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Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust. The books are fun to read. They do explore issues of racism and serfdom, but in a way that doesn't correspond to the modern world, and the main character retains a grounded, no-nonsense attitude.
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Both the Dresden Files series and Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher. The latter is a six-book completed series, with a cool fantasy-meets-Roman-Empire theme.
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Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy has some of the most vividly developed characters I have ever read in a fantasy novel.
hooser
11mo ago
The issue at stake is whether the US House of Representatives will have proxy voting, which was not allowed except, temporarily, during Covid. Once any exceptions are allowed, those exceptions will get expanded until proxy voting is fully normalized. Except for the few that plan to make statements, a Representative always has something better to do than attend the House vote (make calls to raise money, meet lobbyists). So once proxy voting gets established, there will be strong pressure against attendance.
I understand why Johnson is dragging his feet on the matter.
On the other hand, I wonder how much of the "deliberative nature" of the in-person House vote has already been destroyed by C-Span. If all statements are prepared in advance, and anything you say can and will be used against you in an edited video clip during the next election cycle, does anyone present at the current House floor deliberation change their minds on anything?
hooser
11mo ago
Great post! I want to focus on a minor point you made:
Global poverty has plummeted, lifespans have doubled, and literacy is nearing universality, largely thanks to the diffusion of technologies and modes of thinking traceable back to the Enlightenment's core tenets.
Unlike the other two, literacy is not an undisputed good. It is a difficult mode of communication that takes years to learn, and about 1/5th of adults in the developed world never learn to read for comprehension. We prize literacy because, for now, it's required to navigate our society. Will that still be the case ten years from now, when your phone can text-to-speech anything you point it to, and will not only read it to you but also answer your follow-up questions voice-to-voice? (I already do this with languages I don't know, except I prefer to read the translations myself.)
It's still significant that literacy is so widespread in the world, because it implies that most people have the resources and the leisure to have their kids spend several years pursuing challenging training. Is this the best use of those children's time? I honestly don't know. I have greatly benefited from my ability to read and write, and I continue to prefer to do so even when I have alternatives: I would rather read a blog than listen to a podcast, and I would much rather read a book myself than listen to an audio-book. But I also know many people who prefer it the other way.
So, is literacy (that is, ability to read for comprehension) truly superior to other forms of recorded communication (audio-visual), and does this superiority justify the years of training one needs to master the skill?
Since the government's letter demands a "critical mass" in every academic department and teaching unit, it's subject to interpretation whether that calls for one witch or a coven of witches.
It also implies that one can't change one's mind. "Wait," the Statistics department chair says, "we hired you to represent the Frequentists, what are you doing using Bayesean statistics in your research?!"
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